+1 . GST/OMR with good supporting infrastructure have the potential to become some thing like the Western and Central suburbs of Mumbai . 37 km is almost Thane on the Central side and Borivali (our Kelambakkam) on the Western .

+1. With the 6/8 laning of GST Road by NHAI this area is going to rock.

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Sources in the Highways Department said their drawings had been made keeping in mind the widening of the GST. Land acquisition is being done accordingly, the official said.

Two other projects replacing level crossings along the GST Road that are in various stages of construction are also awaiting NOC from the NHAI. At least 30 per cent of work has been completed at LC 47 at Singaperumal Koil. It would be a road over bridge with a rotary on top.

The Rs. 52 crore project commenced a year ago and is expected to be completed in September 2013. However, sources said that the NHAI has asked for change of design as in future, the GST Road is expected to be widened into an 8-lane facility. Presently, the NHAI is the process of finalising the detailed project report for 6-laning it.

The State Highways Department will form two link roads to connect the traffic on arterial roads in southern parts of the city in this fiscal.

Highways and Minor Ports Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami who tabled the policy note for 2012-2013 at the Assembly on Friday said that the Pallavaram-Thoraipakkam Radial Road, which now connects IT corridor and the GST Road, would be extended up to East Coast Road. Once the department completes preparing detailed project report, process to acquire lands would begin this year.

B. Kannan, a resident of Thoraipakkam, said link roads between GST Road and ECR and ECR and Rajiv Gandhi Salai would help residents. Sources in the Highways said they will initiate detailed project reports for the schemes announced in the Assembly soon. The proposal to extend Pallavaram- Thoraipakkam Radial Road up to the ECR would cut travel time for those commuting to GST.

The other link roads are from the stretch of Maraimalai Adigai Bridge-Irumbuliyur Road at Medavakkam to Karapakkam on Rajiv Gandhi Road and a 200-feet road connecting Chennai bypass and Outer Ring Road near Karunakaracheri at Ambattur. Alignment has been changed after the residents' protest in the locality.

Two more grade separators would be added to southern Chennai this year. While one facility would come up on the junctions of Medavakkam Road and Pallavaram Thoraipakkam Road near Keelkattalai at a cost of Rs.60 crore, another would link three roads. The Rs.90 crore worth grade separator would be built on the junction of Medavakkam-Sholinganallur Road, Medavakkam- Mambakkam Road and Maraimalai Adigai Bridge-Irumbuliyur Road at Medavakkam.

Some more projects in the pipeline are link roads between Rajiv Gandhi Road and ECR at Neelankarai and Palavakkam estimated to cost Rs.100 crore. Detailed project reports are being prepared for a grade separator at the junction of Mount-Poonamallee Avadi Road and Chennai Bengaluru Road near Poonamallee.

Connecting ECR and OMR will help between east–west connectivity, said officials. “All the links that we now have on the roads are from north to south and development too is happening in that direction. With east west connectivity, development that is perpendicular to the two roads will happen,” an official said. Residents of west Chennai also have something to cheer as bridges across Coovum river at Nolambur and between Mount Poonamallee Avadi Road and Paruthipattu would be built.

Minister K. Palaniswami also elaborated on six-laning of Rajiv Gandhi Road for 25 km from Siruseri to East Coast Road near Mamallapuram. He sanctions Rs.100 crore for phase II of Outer Ring Road. In a bid to develop infrastructure for Oragadam industrial park, Singaperumal Koil-Sriperumbudur Road and Vandalur-Walajabad Road would be widened to four lanes.

CHENNAI: The government will build a 1,420 crore peripheral road that will skirt the city and its heavy traffic to connect Mamallapuram in Kancheepuram district and Ennore Port in neighbouring Tiruvallur. The 162-km-long highway will compliment Outer Ring Road that connects Vandalur and Tiruvallur-Ponneri-Panchetti Road in Minjur.

Announcing the Chennai Peripheral Road in a suo motu statement in the assembly on Wednesday, chief minister J Jayalalithaa said the highway will link Singamperumal Koil, Sriperumbudur, Tiruvallur, Thamaraipakkam, Periyapalayam and Puduvoyal and Kattupalli near Ennore Port.

"A detailed report will soon be prepared for the project. New stretches of 83.2km will be built for the road and 78.6km of existing road will be upgraded," she said. The road, which will come up 30km from Outer Ring Road, will aid container movement to and from Ennore Port.

Industry reacted with elation to the announcement. "The idea is wonderful and we welcome it. The state is bringing to life its Vision 2023 document which gives thrust to infrastructure development," said R Dinesh, chairman, CII-Tamil Nadu State Council.

"The manufacturing, automobile and automotive component industries are mushrooming rapidly in the Chengalpet and Sriperumbudur-Oragadam belt due to availability of infrastructure and skilled workers," Dinesh said. "The initiative will raise investor confidence."

Phase I of the Outer Ring Road was conceptualised in 1996, but took shape only in 2010. "Acquisition of land for ORR came at a huge cost, but that will not be the case with Chennai Peripheral Road," said a senior highways official.

The road will also help container movement from the southern districts along East Coast Road, 765km of which the state is widening and upgrading between Chennai and Kanyakumari. "ORR will soon reach its capacity so it is imperative to work on a project for the long-term," the official said.

"If the deadlock is resolved and the Chennai Port-Maduravoyal road is built, it will compliment the peripheral road," an industrialist said. The NHAI-Chennai Port Trust joint initiative was recently put on hold by the state public works department, which wanted course correction of the road along the Cooum.

Chennai-based Vision India Real Estate is planning to launch two projects with a total cost of Rs 1,750 crore. The company will invest around Rs 300 crore, apart from the land cost, which will be funded primarily through foreign direct investment (FDI), according to a top official of the company.

The company, which is currently developing a 680-unit apartment project at Padur near the Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR) in collaboration with Gem Group, is looking at launching a villa, apartment and plotted residential project on 75 acre at the OMR by the end of this year.

It will also launch a villa and apartment project at the GST Road on the outskirts of Chennai, said Shekar Chandrashekar, who has recently taken charge as the chief executive officer of Vision India Group.

“We have so far developed 850,000 sft of space in collaboration with Gem Group. The new projects will add around 1.5 million sft in OMR and 500,000 sft in GST Road in the next five to six years,” he said.

The OMR project is expected to have a project cost of Rs 1,500 crore, while the project cost for the GST venture will be around Rs 250 crore.

“We will be investing a total of around Rs 200 crore in the OMR project, of which at least Rs 100 crore will come in through the FDI route. Since some of our promoters are from overseas, the promoters' infusion will also be considered as FDI,” Chandrashekar said.

He added that the 50-acre GST project was also expected to have an investment of around Rs 100 crore and will be launched by the end of 2012 or beginning of next year. The upcoming OMR project will have around 500 plots and 500 villas to be developed in the next five to six years.

Vision India, which is into integrated property development and asset management, has a sister company – Vision USA – in the US, and an affiliated company in Europe.

The company has plans to set up its first logistics park on 50 acre in Chennai. It is in the process of finalising the land, for which a memorandum of understanding will be signed shortly. Construction work on the Rs 50-crore project is expected to commence by 2012, he said.

The company is also planning to set up logistics parks in Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai at a later stage. It will leverage the experience and expertise of some of the overseas companies of its promoters to develop the parks, Chandrashekar said.

CHENNAI: South India houses close to half of the country's office space. But with office vacancy rate inching higher, real estate developers in the south are eyeing the residential space for sure returns.

In Chennai alone, there is more than 30% office space vacancy in peripheral areas such as Old Mahabalipuram Road (beyond Perungudi) and GST Road (beyond Perungalathur). In suburban areas (Guindy, Perungudi, Taramani, Ambattur), the vacancy rate is more than 16%, while off-Central business district locations have a 9% office vacancy rate, according to real estate consulting firm Cushman & Wakefield.

Real estate consultants define central business district (CBD) as arterial roads stretching 2km from the Anna flyover like Nungambakkam, RK Salai and Anna Salai. Off-CBD areas include places such as Guindy, Velachery and Anna Nagar, which come after CBD.

"People will come to Chennai to build residential projects as there is an oversupply in office space," real estate developer Navin's MD R Kumar said.

The supply of office space in southern cities has been more or less met for the medium term, according to a report from global real estate consulting firm Jones Lang LaSalle. The report said the cities have chosen a strategy of pursuing selective quality development over rapid expansion. Peripheral areas - beyond Perungudi and Perungalathur - are expected to see further decline in demand and rise in supply. Slow infrastructure development is the key problem that bog down demand there, say experts.

Most builders are confident about the south Indian housing market, especially Chennai. With demand rising, the sell-outs are working as planned, they say. "Private equity players and new entrants are more interested in Chennai as sales happen as per plan," said S Vasudevan, CEO, Embassy Group. Diversified company Archean Group has chalked out plans to build their first residential project in Chennai. The company is looking at a high-end, high-rise residential apartment complex in OMR, touted to be one of tallest buildings in the city.

Generally, south India's residential market follows the affordability mantra, with more than 80% of the new launches in the past two years being priced under Rs 4,000 per square feet.

As a result, the residential markets of south Indian cities have remained resilient in the past few quarters, the LaSalle report added.

Singapore-listed technology park developer Ascendas is likely to acquire an IT special economic zone of Shriram Properties in Chennai for about Rs 500 crore, said two banking sources briefed on the matter. Ascendas, which owns a string of business parks in India, is said to have pipped competing offers from other global investors Tishmen Speyer, Xander Group and Mapletree, a real estate arm of Temasek.

Shriram Properties is the privately held real estate unit of the $9-billion southern conglomerate Shriram Group. Ascendas fired the top bid for the 1.3 million sq ft special economic zone, which counts Accenture and Mahindra Satyam among others as tenants. The SEZ has potential to develop 3.2 million sq ft business space due to be completed in the next two years. Ascendas is expected to clinch a deal only for the already tenanted space and won't have any right of first refusal for the development in the pipeline, said one of the sources.

Shriram Properties MD M Murali did not respond to repeated calls from this newspaper. Shriram's IT SEZ is part of a larger mixed use development on a 58 acre land, which it had bought from Standard Motors Factory in 2006.

GST Road, in many ways, is the city's lifeline. Not only is it the gateway to the city, linking it with many important places, it is also gaining ground as an important investment option, as far as residential real estate is concerned. We look at some prominent locations on GST Road that are set to grow even further.

MARAIMALAINAGAR:

This suburb, located 40km away from the city, has been on the development radar for quite sometime now, both in terms of residential and industrial growth. In the late 70s, when Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, visited Chennai, he referred to Maraimalainagar as the new face of Chennai and called it the city's first satellite town. Now, almost two decades later, the area has grown by leaps and bounds in terms of urban infrastructure. The setting up of Mahindra World City, Infosys and the Ford manufacturing plant, to name a few, has helped put Maraimalainagar back on the map. The area is well-connected by rail networks and by roads (Trichy-M a d u r a i - K a nya k u m a r i Highway). It is also for this reason that Maraimalainagar is home to a whole range of factories - TAFE, Ford, Siemens, a few printing presses, engineering colleges like SRM University (Kattankulathur), etc, apart from its proximity to the industrial belts of Oragadam and Sriperambudur. The Chennai Outer Ring Road project, a 30km-long six-lane road connecting Vandalur with Nemilicheri is under construction now; this is expected to fuel more growth in Maraimalainagar.

ORAGADAM:

Oragadam, centrally located between Grand Southern Trunk and NH4, has been touted as Chennai's largest and the most developed industrial belt. With over 22 Fortune 500 companies (of which six are global car manufacturers), the Sriperumbudur-Oragadam belt has seen tremendous industrial growth in less than four years. The area is well-connected via road and rail, and according to industrial experts, the presence of automobile giants like Renault-Nissan and Ford has triggered growth around Oragadam. Several manufacturing giants such as , Motorola, Dell, Flextronics, Samsung, Nokia, Apollo Tyres, and TVS Electronics, have set up their respective units in the industrial belt stretching from Sriperumbudur to Oragadam. In addition, JCBL Ltd, Essar Steel, BPCL, Delphi TVS Diesel Systems Ltd, GE Bayer, Silicons (India) Pvt Ltd have also set up their businesses in SIPCOT Industrial Park, Oragadam. DHL is also reported to be setting up its first Free Trade Warehousing Zone at Sriperumbudur.

CHENNAI OUTER RING ROAD

The Chennai Outer Ring Road will run to a length of 62 km connecting Vandalur in NH-45 (GST) placed in the South-Western edge with Minjur in Thiruvotriyur-Ponneri-Pancheti (TPP) Road in the northern fringe of the city and close to the Ennore Port and other industrial developments in the Northern areas. The road will run via Nazarathpet on NH-4 (Bangalore Highway), Nemellichery on NH-205 (Chennai-Tirupati-Anantpur Highway) and Padayanallur on NH-5 (Chennai-Calcutta). The Vandalur to Nemillichery stretch, a length of 29.65 km is being implemented as Phase-1 of development. The stretch is touted to change the face of Chennai as we know it, and pave way for state-of-the-art infrastructure, which in turn, is expected to promote more real estate activity.

The 18-km stretch from the IT corridor in Kelambakkam to the Grand Southern Trunk (GST) road junction at Vandalur was lying low for quite some time due to the hectic real estate development activity on either side of the corridor. With the soaring land prices and acute scarcity of land for housing development, the perpendicular road that connects both the corridors is bristling with activity, thanks to the improved connectivity levels and willingness on the part of Chennaiites to shift from city areas.

There is another reason for the sudden shift in trend. With the availability of large land parcels, property developers could plan large projects with a comprehensive range of amenities that will convince the people that it is time to live in a gated community development for varied reasons.

Over 15 developers have ongoing residential projects on either side of the Vandalur-Kelambakkam road. These range from affordable housing, plotted development, luxury apartments to villas. Among the developers who have ongoing projects, specific mention must be made about Puravankara Projects, Sobha Developers, Unitech, Real Value Promoters, Vijayshanthi Builders, Artha, Isha Homes, SSPDL, Emaar MGF, DABC, Provident Housing Development, among others. A number of affordable housing projects are likely to change the skyline of the area in the coming years, according to industry sources. Apartment prices for ongoing projects range from Rs 2,500 to 3,900 per sq ft whereas row houses are quoted at Rs 3,500 per sq ft. Developed plots in areas like Vengambakkam are quoted at Rs 1,000 per sq ft.

The presence of Chettinad Hospital, VIT University and engineering colleges have pushed the demand for housing and nudged others to shift to suburbs. A few schools are due to come up in the corridor. As the GST corridor is bustling with activity due to lack of infrastructure and soaring land prices, Vandalur-Kelambakkam road came in handy for developers to look at housing development due to availability of large land parcels and willingness on the part of land owners to opt for joint venture development. This has enabled a number of property developers to make a beeline in search of suitable land parcels for development. As the connectivity levels have improved and housing prices are competitive, those working in the IT corridor would be keen to invest in the coming years as prices are yet to touch the IT corridor level.

Though social infrastructure is lacking, Vandalur junction is poised for a major turnaround in development. Aerens Gold Souk is under construction near Vandalur on GST road. With improved connectivity levels to Oragadam via Tambaram-Mudichur road the area offers good transport connectivity for blue-collared workers to invest in housing as social infrastructure is gradually improving in the vicinity. The road widening work on GST road is long overdue and will go a long way in improving housing development in and around the area.

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